Film 29/3

Todays class was dedicated to using Adobe Premiere and editing our footage. It was quite interesting to see how everybody edited their versions slightly differently even though our pool of shots was small.

Once I got the hang of the areas to drag and drop, how to import, and the manipulation of the sequences, I found it easy to sort out my footage. I think a couple more practice sessions will help in regards to feeling comfortable with the editing title/credit screens and the frame by frame editing

I think our little film turned out pretty ok considering the short filming period.

Gaming 28/3

Todays class has been about learning to use Unity to create an environment for our characters. Using imported 3D assets, we can manipulate them using W key to move, E key to rotate and R key to change size and scale. Holding the middle mouse button down and dragging is a quick way to navigate around the window, with holding and dragging the right mouse button to change the point of view. I have already started playing with the terrain painting features to create a mountain valley, hopefully a river or lake next. The painter itself is very similar to mudbox in the way it moves, it is very touchy too Ive noticed, hopefully practice with the program will help with that.

Second half of class was playing with water, once I was shown how to do it, what I wanted to achieve became easier. I must remember to drag and drop from the assets down the bottom to create the textures. The water itself seems constrained to a round plane, and so creativity is needed to make a river. Currently I have 3 water objects, all manipulated differently, to get the result in the following picture. Although the limitations of the water seem annoying, it is easy enough to solve the issues by not treating the plane as the ground, and building up platforms for the environment and modifying those instead.

Digital Painting 26/3

Today we watched Howls Moving Castle, first time for me. Very interesting story line in this movie. I loved the almost oil painting backgrounds in this film, and the contrast to the basic, sharp colouring of the foreground images. The colour palette suited the victorian era of the movie well, with the bursts of bright colour creating an attention grabbing pop to break up the dull, dark colours of the town, day to day life and war scenes. The background designs are definitely more my type of art, landscapes, nature, blended colours.

Retreived from https://markcz.com/imposition/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/howls-moving-castle.jpg

Howl's Moving Castle is a story about a young woman with a low opinion of her image, a young cocky wizard and a countryside at war. The young woman is swept into a world of conflict when Howl comes to her rescue on an outing, and unintentionally drawing her into a battle between himself and a witch. The movie follows the cursed young womans journey with Howl, his fire demon, and a young child in a giant steampunk style "castle". As the story progresses, Sophie falls in love with Howl, and helps to change his outlook on life, saving him for his inner monster and his mentor. The story ends with Howl regaining his heart, Sophie's curse broken, a couple of additions to their wee family and the war ended.

Continuity is maintained by the use of the same muted colour palette throughout the entire movie. There is also a strong steampunk twist on every scene, tying every town together, and hinting at the time period. Every time Sophie starts to worry about her appearance not being good enough, the old woman appearance becomes stronger. When she starts to not worry about her appearance, it begins to return to its original state.

Whenever Howl goes off to fight in the war, everything is dark. The sky, ground and beings, with bright fire everywhere to contrast. This is a good visual representation of the darkness that Howl is fighting within himself constantly throughout the story.

When the castle was moving through the valley to Star lake, the entire background was scaled down to a very small size, creating a sense of huge distance in the valley, and the castle was scaled up, to give the sense of being close to the camera.

When Howl first dyed his hair the wrong colour, he was mad and his hair was red. When he became depressed because of his hair, it turned black like his depression. The colour change helped show his transition in emotions.

Animation 22/3

Onion skin layers for frame by frame

I am slowly coming to the realisation that I am waaay too finicky when it comes to basic drawing. Its slowing me down when it comes to making "quick" animations. Next week is a lesson dedicated to making several animations, only spending 15mins on each one. It will be a big lesson for me, and hopefully I can learn some techniques to loosen up with my style. Ultimately I would love to be able to do quick sketches and be happy with them. The cats animation probably took me twice as long at least than I should have spent on that task. Todays group discussion on the blog is a real help, it clarified what should be going into these blogs, and I feel like I am on the right track so far with them.

Digital Sculpture 22/3

Today was a day dedicated to finishing our proposals that are due tomorrow, it was really good to ask questions for clarification, having Vaughn for gaming on weds and sculpture on thurs is great for continuity. I submitted my proposal tonight, after rewriting parts of it several times. I definitely think I needed to get it submitted before I over complicate everything and end up ruining the whole assignment, and my sanity! My biggest problem, with all of the written proposals, is having no idea what Im doing. The whole concept is brand new to me, and knowing my personality, I tend to overthink everything and second guess myself to a fault. Now that two are out of the way, the marking results will give me some feedback that I can use to improve the other proposals due next month.

Film 22/2

Today we received the proposal information and due date. Handy for adjusting my wall planner as my time management is a work in progress and the wall planner seems to be helping visualise due dates. We also finished filming the class short, unfortunately we ran out of time to edit anything, but got to play around with some of the footage from last week a little bit. Premiere is a little confusing at first, but didnt take long to get a basic grasp on how to use, I think the mini tutorial I got from Chris during animation last week was definitely a help.

Gaming 21/3

Today was a class on finishing the proposal, it was really good to get clarification from Vaughn in regards to word counts and a chance to do a final go over before submitting it. The first one is always the hardest so it will be good to get feedback so I can figure out if Im on the right track or not. I also had another play with the autodesk character generator, and I think this second iteration is a better take on my characters look. Once wings are added I will be happier. Vaughns preliminary play in Unity with animation shows promise, not for flying but at least for walking around naturally with the wings on the back.